


Help I'm Alive

by wtfoctagon



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: F/F, I'm not adding much but you've got gays you've got werewolves, its basically the kaneshiro palace arc but with wolves instead ok, makoto follows the squad on a full moon night because they're being Suspicious, misunderstandings. chaos. makoto hitting her head and passing out. the works., werewolf au!! werewolf au!!, what more do you want, you've got gay werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21764761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtfoctagon/pseuds/wtfoctagon
Summary: Makoto touches her feet to the ground and peers over, freezing when the person (?) shifts onto their back, letting the blanket of fur fall off of them, and Makoto realizes exactly three things:-The person is Takamaki Ann, one of the students she followed into the building and had previously thought was dead.-She seems to be sound asleep.-She’s absolutely stark naked.Makoto snaps her chin up and staples her line of sight to the ceiling. Oh, wow. That’s. A lot.
Relationships: Niijima Makoto/Takamaki Ann
Comments: 12
Kudos: 91





	Help I'm Alive

**Author's Note:**

> title from "Help I'm Alive" by Metric, which was surprisingly fitting

It feels like someone has her head in a vice grip. There’s a pressure behind her eye sockets that’s uncomfortably close to popping, something is burning her right calf and her clothes are too tight in the creases of her joints—

Clothes. Not pajamas. She never made it home last night. She cracks her eyes open as much as she can bear to, taking in the decrepit hospital equipment in the small room she seems to be in. The light is a dim kind of bluish sunlight, and when she tries to sit up, her hand comes against the frayed fabric of a cot.

How did she get here? She closes her eyes and lays back on the cot, trying to retrace her steps. Yesterday, she’d overheard three students— Kurusu Akira, Sakamoto Ryuji, and Takamaki Ann— making some egregiously suspicious plans to meet up at the abandoned hospital at night. She biked there just after the meeting time they decided on, tracked them farther into the building, and then…

Dread slices deep and cold into her chest as she remembers.

_ They’re dead.  _

_ The sound of tearing flesh echoes through the empty room— oh god, oh god they’re dead. Their uniforms and bags are tossed carelessly to the sides of the room, while animals the size of small cars feast on their— their— _

_ She takes a step back, and accidentally kicks something— the animals stop eating immediately, all turning towards her. There’s a moment of silence as they stare each other down— just Makoto, and these beasts— a drop of blood drips from the one of the wolves’ maw and she bites back a shriek. Another second passes, then the one closest to her, with lighter fur, narrows its ice blue eyes and growls. _

_ Makoto runs. She takes off down the hallways as fast as she can, screaming as she hears snarling and clattering of claws follow her—  _

_ They’re dead, and now, she’s going to die here too.  _

_ She leaps down a flight of stairs, trying not to trip— but the only light she has is the full moon coming through the broken windows and her only sense of where the wolves are is the growling and smashing of random debris in the abandoned building— _

_ She’s going to die— she’s going to die in a dark abandoned hospital, torn up by three gigantic wolves for no reason, not even halfway through her last year of highschool— all because that bastard of a principal wanted to send a teenager to do his bidding instead of calling the goddamn cops—  _

_ Something sharp tears into her leg— she screams and swings her helmet behind her, feeling it impact something hard— there’s a whimper and whatever cut into her leg is gone, but she doesn’t stop running.  _

_ God, she thinks to herself, god, somebody, please, help— Onee-chan, please, help, please, I’m sorry— _

_ There’s a flash of something in the patch of moonlight up ahead, and all Makoto sees is gleaming red eyes before she hangs a hard right into another hallway, looking behind her to check if they’re still following her— _

Makoto remembers a sharp scattering of stars through her skull, then a dull ringing; she must have hit her head on something and passed out. But that was in the hallway, and it doesn’t explain why she’s lying on a cot— or why she hasn’t been eaten alive at this point, for that matter. And when did— when did the bite on her leg get bandaged? It hurts, still, and she can feel the fabric plastered to her skin with dried blood. Had someone found her, and rescued her from the wolves? Why wouldn’t she have been brought to the hospital, or the police department?

She won’t find any answers lying here. Makoto gingerly opens her eyes again, wincing as she forces them to adjust to the light before sitting up and swinging her legs off the side of the cot— or, attempting to, anyhow. Her calf stings with the strain of movement and she hisses. Slowly, she lowers one leg after another, inch by inch, teeth clenched— she’s about to slip off the cot and onto her feet when she sees a huge mass of blonde fur on the floor and oh god it’s one of the wolves and she’s going to die and— it’s— uh. Huh. It’s kind of… deflated? 

Makoto blinks. It’s not a wolf, it’s just… a pile of fur that’s the same shade as one of the wolves from last night, laid loosely on the floor in a vaguely wolf-like shape with something in the middle. It’s… a person? Lying on their side with their back to Makoto? Maybe? Makoto touches her feet to the ground and peers over, freezing when the person (?) shifts onto their back, letting the blanket of fur fall off of them, and Makoto realizes exactly three things:

  * The person is Takamaki Ann, one of the students she followed into the building and had previously thought was dead.
  * She seems to be sound asleep.
  * She’s absolutely _stark naked._



Makoto snaps her chin up and staples her line of sight to the ceiling. Oh, wow. That’s. A lot.

And why— what exactly is Takamaki Ann doing right here, completely unclothed, in a pile of fur? She was  _ dead—  _ or, so Makoto had thought. She supposes she hadn’t exactly given a close examination of the pile of blood and flesh that the wolves were digging into, mostly because it was dark and she was scared out of her mind. 

Shrugging out of her leather jacket as quietly as possible, Makoto tries to find footing on the ground without looking downwards. Which isn’t ideal, even if she weren’t injured— her bite twinges again, she flinches, and her boots slip a bit on the fur. Losing her balance, she falls to one knee and glances down quickly to make sure she isn’t squashing any part of Takamaki. 

And then looks  _ right  _ back up, because, goddammit. This is. Inconvenient. She blindly drapes her jacket over Takamaki’s torso as neatly as she can manage, mind whirring: where did all this fur come from? Why is it the same shade as one of the wolves? What—

Something grabs her wrist and she shrieks— she tries to tug her hand away but it’s held in an iron grip and she looks down to see bright blue eyes glaring at her. 

Icy blue eyes. Blonde fur the same shade as the curly mane framing Takamaki’s face right now—

Holy shit.

“Oh— sorry!” Takamaki says, letting go of her hand. “I didn’t mean to— you just surprised me—”

The irony of  _ Makoto  _ startling  _ Takamaki  _ in this situation is absurd, but she doesn’t have the brainspace to comment on it because Takamaki tries to sit up and the leather jacket slips off and oh god.

“Why are you looking at the ceiling…?” 

Makoto’s going to burst into flames. She falls back off of her haunches and leans her back against the flimsy side of the cot, tucking her knees against her chest as the makeshift bandages pull at her skin uncomfortably.

“You— you’re—” she says, making a vague hand gesture while being  _ very  _ careful to keep it closer to her personal bubble than Takamaki’s. 

“Wha—” there’s a small squeak of horror followed by rustling that Makoto  _ hopes  _ is the sound of Takamaki putting the jacket on proper.  _ “Oh my god—”  _

Oh my god indeed. Makoto only lets herself breathe when she hears the zipper go up as well as a few clasps click into place for good measure— probably for the best. 

“This is— this is your jacket, isn’t it?”

Makoto closes her eyes and nods.

“Th-thanks. I think— I think I left my clothes in the other room…”

The other room, next to the unidentifiable bloody heap that is most likely not three teenage corpses? The million questions in Makoto’s head are coming together into one absolutely implausible and yet most logical answer in her head and it’s… 

She opens her eyes, planning to demand answers from Takamaki face-on— and then closes them again right away when she remembers that her jacket cuts off right above the hips and is… woefully lacking for coverage at the present moment. 

“What are you…” she hears Takamaki say as she unbuttons her button-up shirt, shimmying out of it a little ungracefully. “Why are you stripping? That’s not really— you don’t need to be naked too!”

The panic in her voice would be funny if Makoto weren’t so  _ mortified.  _ “I’m not  _ stripping,”  _ she hisses, tugging her arm out of the sleeve and leaving herself in just her plain white tank top. She holds the shirt out in Takamaki’s general direction. “It’s for your—” she stops, because what does she even say? “Your— um— lower… half…”

“Oh— right—” Makoto feels the shirt leave her hand. “Thanks— won’t you— won’t you be cold?”

She clasps her hand over her eyes as she waits, listening to Takamaki shift through the fur as she presumably—  _ hopefully—  _ ties the shirt around her waist. Yes, sure, it’s a little brisk, but, uh.

“I think— I think you need it more than me right now.”

“Y-yeah… thanks…” Makoto hears the quiet cinch of fabric, and another rustle, but she doesn’t dare open her eyes without Takamaki’s permission. “Are— are  _ you  _ okay, actually? You hit your head pretty hard last night.”

So she  _ did  _ knock herself out. That’s pretty embarrassing— she pinches the bridge of her nose before pulling her hand away from her face, daring to crack her eyes open. Thankfully, Takamaki is more or less covered as she sits in the pile of fur— though how good she looks in what should be a ludicrous makeshift outfit is absolutely unfair. 

“Did I?” Makoto asks listlessly, rubbing the back of her head. 

Takamaki nods. “On a bit of pipe that was falling out of the ceiling. We were— we were worried you might have died or something, actually.”

“You were worried that I was—” Makoto looks at Takamaki incredulously, “I thought _ you _ three were dead!”

_ “What?”  _ Takamaki hisses, her eyes going wide. “But we weren’t— why would you—”

“I don’t know, because your uniforms were tossed to the side while three giant wolves were tearing into a pile of flesh?” Makoto turns her palms up with an open-handed clench in an argumentative gesture. 

“That was— that wasn’t us—” Takamaki puts a hand on her chest emphatically, as if offended. “It was all the discount stuff from the butcher! It doesn’t even— how did you think that was a dead body?”

“Well, it was dark and I wasn’t looking very closely?” And when did this turn into an argument? “Besides, why in the world did you have that much meat?!”

“Well, we get really hungry after we shift, okay?” Takamaki says petulantly, her arms crossed. “It’s not like we can help it!”

“That’s—”  _ ridiculous,  _ Makoto wants to say, but to be honest, what would she know about werewolves? It’s then that the reality of it starts sinking in again— the discarded clothes, the pile of fur, the very much not-dead but quite-naked Takamaki…

Makoto reaches down to pinch a wisp of fur between her fingers, rolling it a little between her thumb and index. 

“So,” she starts, staring down at her hand. “You… you really were the wolves from last night.”

Takamaki doesn’t say anything at first, but Makoto can see her fidgeting with her hands in her lap out of the corner of her eyes. 

“I mean…” Takamaki worries the cuticle of her thumbnail for a moment. “Yeah. Basically. You… you’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”

Makoto almost snorts. What would she even say? “I doubt anyone would believe me,” she says mildly, letting go of the piece of fur to look up at Takamaki. “So, this is where you come to have your monthly transformations?”

“Yeah— well— I mean…” Takamaki looks away and starts twirling a strand of her hair cutely. “I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to tell you?”

Makoto swallows, smoothing her palms over her knees. “You have a leader you need to consult, I assume?”

One that’ll most likely decide her fate— whether they’ll let her go (unlikely) or kill her (unfortunate). Maybe— if these three really are behind the disappearances of the students— maybe she’ll finally learn the truth of what’s been happening before she “disappears” as well. 

“I mean, yeah, we have a leader, but he doesn’t decide what we do— we have to have, like, a unanimous decision.”

Makoto nods. “I see.”

There’s an awkward, silent moment where the only things moving are Takamaki’s fidgeting hands. 

“So, like,” Takamaki starts. “I should… probably take you to them.”

Makoto thinks about refusing. Surely, surely there’s some other solution to this awkward situation than allowing herself to be led into a room where she’ll be alone with three werewolves with unclear intentions. Surely, there has to be some way out of this that doesn’t involve the possibility of being mauled to death after some sort of— interrogation or extortion or—

Then again, if that’s what they were planning, wouldn’t she have woken up in the same room as all three of them, tied to a chair? They basically tried to leave her as comfortable as they possibly could in an abandoned building and took the time to bandage her leg. 

She looks back at Takamaki, who’s still playing with the ends of her hair as she sits in the pile of fur, occasionally giving her a look that’s… just…so... entirely unthreatening. 

(And absurdly cute, also, but now’s not the time.)

The possibility that it’s all an act to get her guard down is something to consider, but, well. Even if she did try to escape, she’s not going to be outrunning them anytime soon with her leg. It looks like her options are limited. 

“Alright,” she sighs, running a hand over her face. “Could you help me up?”

Takamaki looks distinctly relieved, letting out an audible sigh. “Yeah, of course— I could carry you, if you want?”

She pushes herself to her feet, and Makoto snaps her head to the side for fear of the widening sliver of thigh she could see as her shirt shifts. 

“That’s— unnecessary,” she says, trying her very best not to stammer.

“Well… okay,” Takamaki says. “Here,” Makoto sees her offer her hands, the sleeves of her jacket riding up on her wrists. “Hold on.” 

Makoto looks up at her— her, with her flaxen hair spilling over the black leather just shy of touching Makoto’s face— and thinks how ridiculous this entire situation is. Takamaki looks almost picturesque in the morning light— the soft, early sunlight peeks through the edges of her hair in golden lining and coaxes out the faint sprinkle of freckles across her cheeks. 

She doesn’t look like a werewolf, or a delinquent, or someone who’d be behind the disappearing students, for that matter— but then again, here they are. She’s sitting in an abandoned hospital, cornered by werewolves— albeit unthreatening ones, so far— and is exactly zero steps closer to uncovering who might be behind the disappearances. All she really has to show for it is an unreasonably big bite wound.

Takamaki frowns. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m—” Makoto swallows. “Is— is this...” she sort of gestures vaguely to her leg. “Going to turn me into…”

She trails off, trying to phrase it as delicately as possible— she doesn’t exactly want to call it contagious or anything, as that’s quite rude—

Takamaki blinks. “Oh! No, it’s not— you’re not—” She makes an uncertain grimace, scrunching up her nose. “It doesn’t really work like that.”

“I see.” Well, that’s one concern out of the way. She’s not quite sure she’d much like the life of a werewolf. It would make studying for the entrance exams rather difficult, for one thing.

(... Exams? Is that what she’s really worried about right now?)

“Well…” Takamaki says a bit awkwardly, holding her hands a little closer to Makoto. “Come on. I should probably get you over there now.”

Makoto blinks hard, shakes her head a bit for good measure before the comical, shell-shocked apathy can really set in.

“Right,” she sighs bleakly before grabbing on and bracing herself. 

**Author's Note:**

> For your reading pleasure, please imagine those three dumbos that night after Makoto hits her head-- crowding around her, howling pitifully, thinking "OH MY GOD WE KILLED HER WHAT DO WE DO" "CALL 911" "WE CANT CALL ANYTHING WE DONT HAVE HANDS RIGHT NOW" "I CANT GO TO JAIL" "guys calm down i think she's still breathing"


End file.
